4 ms·

> Consider San Francisco to Los Angeles, for example. That’s about 9 million people a year who fly? It’s only 400 miles. California has already done a lot of t

by flomo 3y ago

> Consider San Francisco to Los Angeles, for example. That’s about 9 million people a year who fly? It’s only 400 miles. California has already done a lot of the engineering analysis for this one. They need to build like a hundered tunnels through mountain ranges, seismic rifts, and mansion districts. It's great planning businesses for the consultants, but it is way too expensive to ever be constructed. Much cheaper to fly over all of that, rather than go under it.

3D30497420 3y ago
I don't know details on how CA compares to Italy, but Italy has built a very good high-speed network. A sizable portion of it is through fairly mountainous, very seismically active, pretty populated regions. I recently took the Frecciarossa from Bologna to Florence and was really looking forward to sitting back and enjoying the view of the Italian countryside. Instead, you spend most of your time going through tunnels, with the occasional quick glimpse of the countryside out the window. Milan to Rome is about ~350 miles (580 km) and the train takes about 3 hours, compared to a ~6 hour drive. I believe this is about the same distance from LA to SF.
- flomo 3y ago
  You can fly from LA to SF in 30 minutes. Even with all the airport security theater, CAHSR's hundreds of planned tunnels will not be competitive for business travelers. The premise is more about people wanting to go to Fresno.
delta_p_delta_x 3y ago
> mountain ranges, seismic rifts, and mansion districts Have they consulted Japan, which has successfully built HSR through precisely the same sort of terrain, geophysical, and human limitations that California appears to have, including being on some of the most seismically active places on the planet? I swear, Americans have some sort of bipolar disorder when it comes to high speed rail. They love the concept of it, but when it comes to actually implementing it, nothing actually gets done, or people complain that 'it's going to be too expensive' or 'America is too big' or 'we have seismic zones'. It's very hilarious and a bit sad, looking in from the outside. For the record, urban rapid transit is no better. New York City (and maybe San Francisco) being the exception, essentially every other large American city has nearly non-existent public transport. European cities are significantly better, and East/Southeast Asian ones (HK, Tokyo, Seoul, Singapore) are in a completely different league altogether.
- flomo 3y ago
  Or just flying is cheap and easy so we don't have a masochistic fixation on choo-choos. There's only a couple places in America where trains even work in theory, and yeah they should have better ones.
  - delta_p_delta_x 3y ago
    > is cheap and easy Are you sincerely telling me you'd honestly rather prepare to leave 5+ hours before your departure, drive 30+ km to the middle of nowhere, arrive at the airport 3+ hours before your departure, only to wait in multiple queues and be violated by the TSA, and then stuff yourself along with hundreds of others in a metal tube 10 km in the air and suffer possible ear ache, lousy service, irritating passengers, etc etc? > choo-choos European, Japanese, and Chinese high speed railways are far from 'choo-choos'. You can get first-class service on the ground for the price you pay for a cramped economy seat on almost all carriers.

by flomo 3y ago

3D30497420 3y ago

I don't know details on how CA compares to Italy, but Italy has built a very good high-speed network. A sizable portion of it is through fairly mountainous, very seismically active, pretty populated regions. I recently took the Frecciarossa from Bologna to Florence and was really looking forward to sitting back and enjoying the view of the Italian countryside. Instead, you spend most of your time going through tunnels, with the occasional quick glimpse of the countryside out the window. Milan to Rome is about ~350 miles (580 km) and the train takes about 3 hours, compared to a ~6 hour drive. I believe this is about the same distance from LA to SF.

flomo 3y ago
You can fly from LA to SF in 30 minutes. Even with all the airport security theater, CAHSR's hundreds of planned tunnels will not be competitive for business travelers. The premise is more about people wanting to go to Fresno.

delta_p_delta_x 3y ago

> mountain ranges, seismic rifts, and mansion districts Have they consulted Japan, which has successfully built HSR through precisely the same sort of terrain, geophysical, and human limitations that California appears to have, including being on some of the most seismically active places on the planet? I swear, Americans have some sort of bipolar disorder when it comes to high speed rail. They love the concept of it, but when it comes to actually implementing it, nothing actually gets done, or people complain that 'it's going to be too expensive' or 'America is too big' or 'we have seismic zones'. It's very hilarious and a bit sad, looking in from the outside. For the record, urban rapid transit is no better. New York City (and maybe San Francisco) being the exception, essentially every other large American city has nearly non-existent public transport. European cities are significantly better, and East/Southeast Asian ones (HK, Tokyo, Seoul, Singapore) are in a completely different league altogether.

flomo 3y ago
Or just flying is cheap and easy so we don't have a masochistic fixation on choo-choos. There's only a couple places in America where trains even work in theory, and yeah they should have better ones.
- delta_p_delta_x 3y ago
  > is cheap and easy Are you sincerely telling me you'd honestly rather prepare to leave 5+ hours before your departure, drive 30+ km to the middle of nowhere, arrive at the airport 3+ hours before your departure, only to wait in multiple queues and be violated by the TSA, and then stuff yourself along with hundreds of others in a metal tube 10 km in the air and suffer possible ear ache, lousy service, irritating passengers, etc etc? > choo-choos European, Japanese, and Chinese high speed railways are far from 'choo-choos'. You can get first-class service on the ground for the price you pay for a cramped economy seat on almost all carriers.